Mac OSX Application Window Won’t Maximize

I had an absolute nightmare with my Eclipse on Mac OSX 10.5.8, this morning, when, all of a sudden, the opened application window appeared as above. As you can see the ‘+’ button was obfuscated and there was no means of dragging open or expanding the window. The main Mac header was available and I could, for instance, open an Eclipse search box, but could in no way expand the main window.

The problem: Mac doesn’t support ‘maximize’. Using Google-fu, I sought keyboard shortcuts for ‘maximize’. This revealed to me that Mac does not support an equivalent ‘maximize’ functionality, as on Windows (I became a Mac user in Sept ’09, so still finding my feet), and so keyboard shortcuts for ‘maximize’ are problematic and app-dependent.

The solution: Right Zoom from Blazing Tools. This sweet little piece of freeware installs quickly and allows you to Cmd + Option (alt) + E to ‘maximize’ the current application’s window. Saved my bacon and stopped me having to reinstall my whole development environment. Whoop!